Down In Smoke
by danglingdingle
Summary: What happens when Will leaves, and Jack is left alone? Post-AWE and angsty, seeing canon from the slashy Jack/Will-POV. Disclaimer: Disney's characters used here for no profit.


Jack leaned his back against the door he'd just walked through in the bowels of the _Pearl_. The very heart of the Pearl, as it were. Somehow it seemed so very appropriate for the _Pearl__'__s_ heart having been growing cold, since the last person to light a fire to it had lost his only recently, not to mention the one said person had taken with him.

As an instinctive precaution more than anything an intelligent thought provoked, Jack placed his lantern on the workbench, next to a pair of long sleeved gloves made of thick leather.

_/Why? I__'__ve had you begging for me to lick your arsehole but you never let me kiss these tiny delightful spots here, now why is that, Will?/_

Swallowing hard and pressing his left hand against the wood and spreading his fingers, clutching a piece of parchment in the other, he convinced himself that the door was real, and closed, and no one would come near the place, and he could, finally, close his eyes and shudder.

Jack shuddered, and the two words scripted on the parchment burned his palm.

_/They__'__re so__…__personal. It__'__s the price of my learning, of my work, and they__'__re hardly delightful. Jack, what are you doing?/_

The composure of the disputed captain held no more. He'd been putting up with enough nonsense during the decade that had miraculously been over in a day to earn his right to disassemble himself, and disassemble himself he would. How else was he supposed to put all the pieces together again, now that the fire was gone?

…How was he supposed to melt enough to put the pieces together again, now that the fire, the forge, and the forger were…_gone_?

_/You, Will Turner, honest to God, don__'__t you think that by all rights I should be allowed to love all of you, not only the places you see fit to be loved?/_

The last brittle, rapidly uncoiling strings which held Jack together snapped right when he took a step further into the smithy. The once sturdy rigging left him falling on his arse, crashing down heavily into an ungraceful heap of a man, and disappeared with the rest of the world, leaving dark eyed echoes behind. Accusing echoes, indignant echoes, each one deserving their place gnawing in the back of Jack's mind in response to his last words before Will had left.

_/Then you must let me do the same to you, Jack Sparrow, and not only show me the Jacks you see fit to be shown. Or am I not allowed to love all of you?/_

The world was obviously still turning, since Jack could distinctively feel the _Pearl _swaying on the waves. For the first time in his life, Jack felt nauseous by the lull, the bile he'd spewed towards Will once again tasting bitter in his mouth.

At least there was the lull, instead of the dead sandy calm they both still felt clawing at their insides.

"Would you like to hear about it? All of it? Would you still love me, after learning _all_ of me? Would you forgive me then? Like I forgive you…"

The dull air didn't respond.

The absurd thought, bright and vivid in Jack's mind, that he'd once again begin hearing things pulled an equally absurd, gut-twisting, mum guffaw out of Jack, making him turn onto his side to draw breath, shaking helplessly under the attack of his own treacherous self until his eyes bled clear drops of his lifeblood, and the only reasonable thing left to do was to curl over himself.

"You're away."

The air hung heavy still.

A sudden knock on the door startled Jack something fierce, making him crunch his eyes shut and wish the whole world to leave him alone. If only for this one moment.

"Go away."

"Cap'n, Cap'n Barbossa has plotted a course, sir." Mr. Gibbs' hesitating voice came muffled through the door.

"Captain Barbossa can take a long boat and plot his course towards the nearest shore. In fact, on a second thought, you can just tell _him_ to _go away_."

"I'm afraid that's not possible, sir, the crew really wants to get to Tortuga."

Bloody Barbossa. Bloody Chartman.

Chartman.

Charts.

_/Jack, you remember the story of Ponce de Leon, how he wanted to find the waters of Bimini?/_

Jack clambered on his feet and towards the cold ashes in the makeshift forge, eyes wandering around the cabin to find something to light a fire with, to no avail.

He got closer and kneeled as if worshipping at the altar of a heathen god, wishing for a miracle while his thoughts formed a hurricane, swilling and furious…purifying.

_/William. You should know better than anyone that I have no need of finding a cure for my sexual incompetence__…__err__…_Don't have _such things to be cured with any waters!/_

The forge didn't get any warmer, no matter how fiercely Jack stared, prayed, and pleaded. Fire, at this moment, meant life. The flames would alight hope, the hope would alight hearts, and hearts would absolve his harsh words.

_Fine. No fires lit in your forge, _Captain_ Turner. Not without you kindling it. Not without your permission._

"I didn't understand why you had to do that, William. Why marry her? Why then? But I do now." Jack sighed and sat cross-legged, unraveling the bit of paper, holding it up for the forge to see. "See? I believe you now, and you were right. I _do_ know you better than that."

He swallowed hard when the reasons Will had given for his actions returned with vengeance, how Jack had viciously attacked the man with the tongue lashing of a lifetime, when Will had only done what had to be done.

With a forlorn smile, Jack shut his eyes and listened to Will's aggravated voice again with warmth in his heart. So valiant, so righteous… It _had_ been the only way to ascertain Elizabeth's virtue, to save her face, to help her _live _after it was all over. As a respectable widow, drawn into piracy not by her own accord, but as the result of her husband gone awry. There was no other way back. Not after Will was dead.

'Ha!' Jack laughed sardonically at himself, now imagining the smell of smoke in the air. How much insanity could be laden on a single man?

But the smell didn't leave with reasoning, but got stronger instead. Jack cracked an eye open, leaning towards the forge, not believing his senses when it seemed that an ember was glowing in the furthest corner, a tiny red glimmer in the midst of the dead blackness.

He got onto his knees, eyes wide open, and blew into the ember gently, like he'd teased Will's ear once upon a time, time which seemed so far away…

Consumed by silently begging for one last miracle, all the while certain that what was happening was a mere eidolon, created by the monsters dwelling, growing from his own thoughts.

With a trembling hand, Jack placed the paper to the barely kindled ember, and watched as it caught fire, the small flame nipping on the corner of the parchment and as if driven by the hunger in Jack, the flame devouring the two words, sending them up in curling black smoke, up, on their way to try and reach his intended.

In reverent, disbelieving awe Jack followed as the smoke twirled before him, wavering, forming, until the words danced and turned, forming into a letter conjoined with a letter.

_I__'__m sorry._

Hovering as if longing to linger on, the words slowly dissipated into the air, abandoning the astonished man to delve back into his feverish thoughts.

_/Not any that I__'__ve noticed of, but should there be any, the Fountain of Youth should take care of that. Jack, I think I know where it is! Look at the charts!/_

The dark eyes of the echo were the only ones to hear the relieved, heartfelt whisper.

"Yes. Yes, you most definitely are."

"Doldrums, Sir," he rather felt in his head than heard the ghastly voices, almost remembering a time when his lips were chafed with dry white sands instead of the whipping sea breeze. Doldrums, on dry land, as Jack Sparrow, a former captain, watched listlessly while his ship sailed away from him, dull eyes following in her wake, the wind in her sails taken straight from under his wings.

A smile formed in the corner of his mouth together with a dawning thought, baring the futility, the sheer ridiculous stupidity of Barbossa's; There was one who would baffle his winds. This was how Hector wanted it…that's how he'd get it.

Jack took out his compass and watched it whirl, then settle firmly at a fixed point, then, to Jack's astonishment, bend, showing him the way out on the seas below, the seas above, beyond this world, where up was down.

Behind the farthest gate waited his strongest ally…

In the midst of his thoughts, Jack glanced at the compass again, the needle turning lazily as if to offer a suggestion. Dying was out of the question. There was no _reason_ for dying. Not this time. Not ever… Jack had already won.


End file.
